Back to the '50s
By
The Minnesota Street Rod Association is "Going Back to the '50s" this June with its 35th annual car show. It gives you a great sense of what the cars used to be like; it also gave me the idea to ask about what was it like to live in the 1950s -- when a dollar could go a long way. I decided to interview my grandmother, Jean Fillbach, about when she was a teen growing up in southwestern Wisconsin. Jean was born on a small farm near Steuben, where she still lives.
The 1950s were a time when grocery stores offered a smorgasbord of penny candy. It was a time when you could buy a pair of tennis shoes for 98 cents. Yup, it was a different world back then.
I was born and raised in a little two-room house. My parents slept upstairs along with my brother and I had a small cot to sleep on downstairs. The kitchen had one or two old cupboards and a cook stove.
The sewing machine sat underneath the window so my mother could watch us from inside. The old wooden stove sat in the corner; we stoked it and added more firewood every couple of hours during the winter. And the bathroom, well, since it was outside you usually didn’t go until you absolutely had to 'cause you’d have to go in a hurry.
Those were the times it would get real cold, but that kind of weather made the meat stay good. When we’d have pork chops, we'd put it in 5-to-10-gallon stone crocks and put it outside. We'd wrap it with paper, of course, so the animals wouldn’t get to it. Then when we’d want more we could go out and get it and heat it up.
Even if it got a little mold on it, we’d just scrap it off and eat it. Never hurt us none.
The winter was about the only time we'd get fresh meat. Since we didn't have electricity at the time, putting it outside was the only way to keep it fresh. So in the fall and spring we'd butcher our pig and by the time the hot weather had come it'd pretty much be all gone.
At the same time, the chickens would never lay eggs either, especially when it got that cold. So we'd often stock up on eggs and put those in a stone crock covered with oats and put them down in the basement.
They may have gotten old but they never got rotten because we still ate 'em.
Then there was the other side. During the summer if you had ice cream, which was usually homemade, you had to eat it right away otherwise it would melt. Store-bought ice cream was a treat, though. We were lucky if we were able to come by that too often.
Back then everything was homemade. So when you went to the grocery store you got the basics like flour, sugar, and coffee, which only cost about 99 cents a pound. The flour and sugar sacks would come into good use, though. They were great for making clothes. If you could find enough sacks with the same pattern on them, you'd have enough material to make a dress.
We also didn’t even have shampoo or toothpaste so we just used the laundry soap to wash our heads and baking soda and salt to brush our teeth.
Those hot summer days were great to walk down to the corner store where you could get a Coke for a nickel. You actually paid a deposit on the bottles and when you took the bottles back you’d get your deposit back.
But it was the closeness of the community members in the 1950s that differs from today. All the small communities, which only consisted of about 100 people, would have drive-in movies. They would put up a sheet and play westerns or old war movies and it was free. You could put in a few cents; otherwise the store would pay for the show.
Of course you could always go into town and see the show there for 25 cents. I remember riding my bike to Boscobel over nine miles just because I wanted to see a movie, and we didn’t have no five-speed bikes back then.
Even in the home everyone helped one another. The women would cook and the men would work. After the men got done working, they’d eat, then the two dozen kids would eat, then the women would eat and clean up. That’s just the way it was.
One summer, one of the neighbors had caught some 50 pounds of fish and a bunch of women came over and fried it, and then all the neighbors came over for a fish fry.
Even in times of grief, when a loved one passed, neighbors would come and sit with the kids, each of them taking turns while the funeral service was taking place. Even after the funeral they’d come and stay with us kids.
These times are what brought everyone together, what brought everyone close. It was a time when you could hunt on someone else’s land, or even go pick berries. It was a time when you could spend 18 cents for a gallon of gas. It was a time when your phone bill cost $1.99 a month.
That dollar seemed to go along way, even though it was harder to come by. But it was that dollar that represented hard work, family, and a community effort.
Yup, it was a different world back then.